The Things They Carried
by Sunbird Riding Shotgun
Summary: Follows Steal the Sky. The Good Ship Leverage is barely flying and the next jobs a few systems away but for three ex-agents, and the rest of the crew, this interlude is the start of a better life. But not one without baggage.
1. The Things They Taught Her

**Notes: **Follows my story Steal the Sky. This is a complete AU and cross over set up in that story so if you want to understand this you really need to read that first.  
>This takes place between the end of Steal the Sky and the begining of the team's first Leveragey job together.<p>

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><p><strong>The Things They Taught Her<br>**_Four things they taught Parker, and one thing *they* couldn't._

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><p><strong><em>Nate<em>**

The moment the words leave his mouth he knows it was a mistake.

They've been together and whole and flying for just under two days. She's been on the ship for nine.

She's still at the point it took Nate nearly a month to get Hardison past where she keeps asking him for permission to do things that no one should ever have to ask for permission to do and the fact he's already been through this with Hardison doesn't help.

And now, here, she had taken the initiative. She was hungry and she had seen food she wanted to eat and he'd just happened to come out of the conference room in time to see her gleefully biting into the fresh apple she'd taken from the kitchen.

And he'd asked her if Eliot had said she could have that and told her she couldn't just take anything she wanted without asking first.

She looks confused and that look quickly becomes fear and Nate tries his best to backtrack, damage control, holding his hands out in front of him palm up and empty like he'd learned with Hardison in the past few months.

And he swallowed the bile and pressed down the rage at the reminder of why they would panic if Nate spoke sharply while holding something.

"Parker. You can eat whatever and whenever you want, except for the fresh food unless Eliot tells you you can." Parker blinked at him, understanding but not in the way only Parker could and he continued, watching her slowly untense. "The Ares Project messed with his physiology, not just his mind. His body has a difficult time processing additives and preservatives that are used to make the food we normally eat. Fresh fruits and vegetables, basic grains, what meat we can get, it's the stuff he can process most of the time."

She looked at the apple in her hand eyebrows scrunching together, thinking. "It's really expensive." She stated. "We almost never got real stuff because it's expensive and that's why I wanted it." She looked up at him, like a kid pleading for a treat they really wanted but knew they weren't going to get.

He sighed and slowly crossed the space between them. "If something belongs to just one person on our crew you have to ask for, and get, permission before you take it." He tried to put it into terms she wouldn't get confused in the future, and figured it was pointless to try to extend this lesson to beyond just the crew.

"But I'm free. That means I don't have to ask for permission. You keep telling me that."

Nate paused a moment before thinking of a way to put this she might understand. "Before your handlers and Fathers would tell you what to do?" She nodded. From Nate's talks with Hardison he knew they pretty much were expected to only do what they were told to do. "Well now I'll tell you what you can't do, and leave the rest up to you to figure out." She looked at him for a long moment before nodding slowly.

He continued to walk out of the living area, calling back over his shoulder. "You can't take or eat any more fresh food without asking."

He heard the sound of her taking another gleeful bite out of the apple before he closed the door.

**_Dean_**

It was the second day after the little blonde theif, _Parker, _came on board that Dean realized he might have some long-term company in the engine room.

She'd spent most of her first day on the ship alternating between showing off her collection of stolen jewelry, swinging on the catwalks like it was her own personal playground, and unnerving the hell out of him and Sam (okay, it was mostly alternating between the first two and doing the later constantly).

There was something wrong with that chick and this was coming from the guy who'd been raised as one in a long line of people who hunted things that could give Reavers a run for their money in the nightmare department. (Nate had been surprised to learn Reavers weren't the only Nightmare created by Man, just the first ones with large enough numbers not to get swept under the rug by people in power, but he knew better now).

Of course Parker made Hardison's brand of unnerving seem downright _Baba-Mama-he-er-Gemie _Normal.

Ford had told Bobby before they'd all signed up for this mess and then Bobby had told him and Sam about Parker, Hardison, and Eliot. That they'd been more or less enslaved by the alliance since childhood and they were experiencing freedom for the first time. That they'd all been abused in different ways and that they would probably be showing some rough edges.

Dean remembered Sam asking Bobby if he was telling them to be nice to Ford's people.

Despite Bobby's response running along the lines of a warning about the dangers of poking at the insane Dean got the feeling that for all Bobby would never say it that was sort of what he was asking. Bobby hadn't given any details but something on his face said that he'd been given a lot more than he wanted.

It meant he'd been mostly prepared for Hardison and his habit of knowing way too much and the weird way that when his jokes and rambling ended there was something almost painful in the silence as his eyes always drifted upwards. It took a little while, and they still slipped up and forgot more often than they remembered (it had been just the two of them for a long time afterall), but by the time Parker had arrived they didn't yell at each other when Hardison was around and even when they forgot the look of old, deep, fear on the hackers face reminded them quickly.

Parker had been something else.

But he spent most of his free time (what little of it he took, there was a lot of work to be done and he liked working on Leverage even if she had a stupid name) in the engine room and she liked the catwalks and they were on opposite sides of the ship so he didn't need to worry about that.

But then it was the second day after she'd come on board and Dean had just finished welding something near the floor and he felt eyes on him.

He rolled out from under the monstrosity that was the engine (whoever thought that an engine room that was nearly three stories tall to support a cluster of small engines, life support systems, the ship's stealth field generator, and he alone knew all else was a good idea should be shot) looking up through the series of metal scaffolding and bits and pieces of pipe or support that could double as hand and footholds (further proof the engineer had no regard for mechanics) into the gloom near the ceiling and saw Parker hanging upside down from a support beam, unflinching at the eight foot straight drop directly beneath her or the metal pipes that would break her skull and neck long before they broke her fall.

"You can't be in here." He told her. The fact the engines weren't on the only reason he thought she might hear him."

"But I can go wherever I want to go." She stated, something in her voice disturbingly like Sam's back when he was a kid and used to believe and repeat anything Dean told him. "Nate said I could do that now."

It was the now that got him.

"Alright. Just don't touch anything."

He'd always had a soft spot for blondes. It was a character flaw.

He'd keep telling himself that.

"But…" She started.

"Nate said you could do anything you wanted too?" He asked.

She got an almost petulant look on her face. "…No… but he didn't say I couldn't. He keeps telling Hardison and me that now we'll be told what we can't do instead of what we can."

It didn't make a lot of sense to him that that being told what you couldn't do would be a bad thing.

Unless before that the only things they could do were what they were told they could do which was not an idea he liked.

"Well you can stay there." He told her, simplifying things into her terminology, his voice gentling a little like it usually only did when he was talking to someone a good deal younger than she was. "You can't touch anything because if you break something bad things might happen."

She nodded, stuck her hands in her pockets, and closed her eyes.

It took awhile but he eventually got used to having her occasionally come in and, he assumed, take naps hanging from the rafters of his engine room like the bats the ship was modeled after.

It was the third evening after they'd taken to the sky when she left her perch and sat on one closer to him, watching. She wasn't touching anything though so he paid her no heed. He was working on a bit of shiney wiring after all.

"This engine is like a lock." She said just as he was starting to tune her presence out and listen to Leverage's engines. He nearly hit his head as he jolted, startled, to look at her. "Really really complicated. It needs lots of probes and picks and the tumblers are always falling out of place and changing but it you get it just right you hear the click and the Black is unlocked."

He could comment, but he didn't feel like trying to decode that enough to give it the response it probably deserved. "Pass me that wrench will you."

"You said I couldn't touch." She stated, almost solemnly.

"Well now you can touch that wrench to pass it to me." She passed him the wrench and watched as he started to tighten the bolts on the carborator box he'd been working on. "This is a crescent wrench." He stated. "The thing sitting next to it was a C clamp." He held out his hand, silently asking for her to pass the tool.

He didn't expect her to get up and back away. "I can't learn this."

"Huh?"

"I'm a thief. I have explosive designation but not a mechanics one." There was that old fear again, but mixed with frustration this time.

But this he had something he could give a response to, in words she'd understand. "Did Nate say you couldn't?"

She looked at him, expression blank, for a long moment before a brilliant smile crossed her face and she sat down again, passing him the C-Clamp, before asking him what he was doing.

She was unnerving, but unnerving was kind of his job.

**_Sam_**

When Sam was Ten there was a time when Dean had been sick and his Dad was on the other side of the planet and there was no food in the shuttle and Dad told him to take the money he'd left Dean and go out and get what they needed.

He distinctly remembered arming himself for war (or the two block walk to a market) and opening Dean's wallet and just staring at the credits and feeling this insane sense of wonder. He had money. He was going to go out and buy things. He was going to decide what they had for dinner tonight _and then buy it._ By himself.

Alone.

It hadn't been until he got to the store that he realized with money and power came this huge sense of responsibility. What if he got it *wrong*?

Looking back the entire chain of thoughts would have made no sense to anyone who wasn't a ten year old boy from a family that almost never had any money and what they had certainly wasn't put in a child's hands.

At least that was what he thought until now.

It's five days since Leverage soared her way back into the black and they were making their first stop planet side since then to stock up on what goods they couldn't in the tiny settlement they'd spent the last couple months just outside of.

Leverage was staying in orbit, what she was designed to do, with Nate and himself staying on board while the others took the two shuttles planetside.

He was coming out of The Impala, getting the things he'd need out of her in case they ended up staying planet side overnight and he had to stay in one of the passenger rooms instead of his normal bunk, when he saw what reminded him of that one time years ago.

Parker, Hardison, and Eliot had been chosen to head planetside to run errands for their work and to stock the ship, each given an amount of money for the task they accepted easily enough.

But now he saw Sophie walking between them as they stood near the hatch that led to the second shuttle, giving them each a small pouche that clinked with coins. "…new clothes maybe. Books. Whatever."

"Why do we need stuff?" Parker asked, holding the bag like she was weighing it. "I like just having money. I can get what I need with it and if they take it away because I like it I can just get more."

The other two stiffened at her words, their faces going blank, hands falling neutrally at their sides and Sam got this insane thought in his head that it was like they were paranoid having their hands in their pockets would indicated they liked the clothes they were wearing and because of that they'd disappear.

Sophie seemed to not know how to respond to that.

Sophie left, the three former agents talking quietly to each other in Greek as they got ready to leave. Sam turned to the keypad by the hatch he'd come out of, pressing in the sequence to get ready for The Impala to detatch, listening. Hardison seeming excited, Parker seeming wary, and Eliot showing once more his default expression was either a poker face or general annoyance.

Parker was the last one to board the shuttle and Sam took a chance, speaking up and actually to her when it was just the two of them for the first time. "You could get something to keep your money in." Sam suggested. She turned to him, looking surprised. "There were these things called piggy-banks back on Earth that Was that people kept change in."

She looked thoughtful for a moment, or crazy. Her expression tended to all have some crazy in them. After a long moment she gave a little smile.

"Parker!" Came the cry from down the hatch, Eliot sounding like he was in a hurry to get going.

Parker rolled her eyes but turned to catch up.

"You know you're allowed to have things now." Sam said before he could think about what he was saying or really consider the implications of the fact it needed to actually be said (or that he of all people was saying it, he could only name two things he and his brother had really held onto over the years).

She turned back, confusion, crazy, and almost something surprisingly close to fear on her face.

"You're allowed to have stuff, to like stuff. We won't take things away from you."

She left without responding to him and he wondered if she believed him or even understood.

But a few days later that she came onto the bridge during his late night watch carrying a battered old stuffed Bunny and sat down in the co pilot seat with it, hugging it close as she watched the stars with the same awe Sam always had.

_**Sophie**_

It was a week after Eliot arrived and Leverage (god, would she ever get used to that name?) began her first journey. They were still two days out from their first job but she needed to talk to Hardison about their alias sometime before they landed.

Of course the problem was, as usual, finding the man. After checking their work shuttle, the bridge, and the conference room she headed for the dorm level. It was the middle of the afternoon but that didn't mean he wouldn't be sleeping.

Hardison, Parker, and Eliot had responded to the sudden void of the rules and restrictions they'd had all their lives by each adapting their own schedules and habits in complete isolation to the others or even each other. Admittedly in space there wasn't exactly an indicator of Day and Night like the sun but it was normal to do what you could to keep a semblance of balance. The ship's clocks were all set to the same time and the rest of them tended to sleep at a regular hour and eat regular meals.

But Hardison seemed to operate on a thirty hour schedule instead of the twenty-four considered normal. Parker cat napped for a couple of hours at a time randomly throughout the day and night. Eliot seemed not to sleep at all (and Sophie would have actually wondered if somehow the things they'd done to him had made him unable to sleep if he didn't look tired on occasion).

They seemed to take care of the rest of their needs in an equally haphazard manner. Even Eliot seemed to only eat and take his medication regularly because doing otherwise would destabilize his body needlessly.

So Sophie wasn't entirely surprised to find the door to the crew's room closed and the opaque panels showing the room was darkened. Leverage had a decent sized Captain's quarters, a large suite like state room for the elite passengers the ship was designed to transport originally, three small passenger rooms, and a medium sized room meant to house the ship's crew.

Initially the idea had been for Parker, Hardison, and Eliot to each take one of the passenger rooms, and only using the crew's room if they took on real passengers or had to actually use their cover story.

What had actually happened was Hardison immediately taking one of the four berths in the crew's room and Eliot moving in there his first night on board. (Thinking about it Eliot must sleep a little because she overheard him explain to Nate that their entire clans slept in the same room so he actually slept better when someone he knew was in the room. Sleeping while alone felt unsafe.)

Sophie didn't understand why Parker seemed to be an exception until Eliot had explained to her that Parker was the last of her clan, had been alone since she was a little girl.

It explained a lot more than Sophie liked.

So Sophie was a little surprised when she walked into the Crew's room, quietly in case Hardison was asleep instead of just messing with his computers in the dark like he sometimes did, and saw Parker perched on the table in the middle of the room staring at something.

It said something about Parker that her surprised lessened when Sophie realized Parker was watching Hardison sleep.

Parker held a finger to her lips to keep Sophie quiet and Sophie motioned for the girl to follow her out into the hallway.

Once the door was closed behind them and they could talk without waking the hacker Sophie quietly but firmly told Parker she couldn't just watch people while they were sleeping.

"I know." Parker's expression clouded. "But I…" Her voice faded a little before she finished and she looked over her shoulder like she was considering running like she'd taken to doing whenever uncomfortable with a situation. More than anyone on the ship she seemed to find comfort in being alone.

Sophie kept her expression neutural and stayed quiet, trying to give the girl a moment to express herself.

"He… he was having a nightmare." She said finally. "He has nightmares when he sleeps alone. But Eliot was busy with something and he's been tired and I was..." She made a face. "Hardison keeps saying we're a clan now but I don't know how to be clan but I thought maybe if I sat here…" She shook it off, seeming to dismiss the idea of her functioning like a clan member even as she said it, and turned to leave.

Sophie called after her. "Sometimes you don't need permission. Sometimes you need to break rules."

_**Hardison and Eliot**_

They would be landing on Four Rivers in a little more than eighteen hours. Parker was tired, and she knew she should get some sleep between now and then, but she'd been restless for the past few days. Ever since Sophie had found her watching over Hardison she'd been…

She wasn't stupid. She knew Nate, Sophie, Sam, and Dean were all trying to teach her and Hardison and Eliot about being free. She knew they needed the lessons. Hell, sometimes it felt like the three of them were only staying on the boat to learn how to be free and then they'd leave.

The fact Hardison seemed to have mostly gotten a hang of it and Eliot was always pretty well adjusted had been part of what was making her insides feel like they wanted to be outsides.

Agents were the only people that made any sense to her. Eliot and Hardison had been acting as translators for her since they first got on the ship, explaining the verse outside Olympus in terms she could understand and explaining Olympus to the rest of the crew so she didn't have to.

She didn't like them like them, they weren't family. She didn't have family. She didn't want or need family.

But it was a bad kind of scary to not have them around.

She needed sleep but she couldn't make herself relax. Even napping in the engine room or with Bunny in their hidey hole wasn't working.

So she had gone back to watching Hardison sleep.

Only Eliot came in the room not long later and Parker got up because she was only watching Hardison so he wouldn't be sleeping alone. If Eliot was there he wouldn't be alone.

A hand on her arm stopped her from leaving. She turned back, surprised Eliot had stopped her.

"You're tired." He said quietly. "You should get some rest. We need you on your game tomorrow." Somehow him saying it made her feel like her eyelids were even heavier. She nodded and moved to go but the hand stayed on her arm. "You know you're welcome here right?" She turned back again, confusion and an uncomfortable feeling in her chest. "Take a bed and stay. We're a long way from Olympus and we aint agents anymore but I figure we're all the clan we have these days. In this verse if we don't keep close and look out for each other no one will."

She hesitated. She couldn't sleep in a room with someone. She couldn't. Could she?

"I'll let ya have the top bunk." Eliot said with a small grin and Parker found herself trying to match it and nodding.

She could try right?

He pulled off his outter layer of clothing, grimy from the time he'd spent in the engine room (she knew from her naps and the time she spent learning about lock-picking engines from Dean that Eliot also spent some of his free time with the ship's mechanic) and sweated out from the continual rounds of training he went through, and slid under the blankets of his bunk.

He didn't say anything or even look expectantly at her, leaving her to decide what to do and when and how to do it.

It was an odd reminder that she was free to decide that for herself now.

No one said she couldn't sleep around others but herself, no one said she couldn't learn something new or break new habits, no one was going to take these people away from her, and even if all that wasn't true she could still break the rules and do this anyway.

She slipped off her shoes and climbed up into the bunk, curling up in the sheets and closing her eyes.

She drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sounds of Hardison and Eliot's steady breathing and the faint hum of the good ship Leverage.


	2. The Things They Said

**Notes: **Part two of three in this arc. Takes place roughly around the same time as The Things They Taught Her.

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><p><strong>The Things They Said<strong>

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><p>Things had started out promising. From their first meeting Dean had felt something familiar in Eliot. They came from different worlds but somehow they had wound up at similar places, looking out into the black and seeing the same mix of freedom and danger.<p>

Sam hadn't been at all surprised to come back to The Impala their first night in The Black to find Dean showing off his baby to a very impressed Eliot.

Maybe they would have been fine if Dean actually slept as much as a normal human instead of catnapping a few hours at a time when he had time. Maybe then he wouldn't have wandered into the kitchen at an ungodly hour of the night the second night out in time to overhear a conversation between Nate and Eliot in the conference room.

"It don't work like that Nate." Eliot said, hint of a growl on his voice. "I don't read minds I slip inta them. Get caught up in the rush of feelings and consciousness. Yeah, I can get a feel for who's around and sharp emotions but more 'en that I only get bits and pieces. And that's only i-" He stopped suddenly.

Maybe he felt Dean's shock.

Eliot was a reader.

Everything in Dean told him to get into hunter mode, to attack.

Eliot walked through the door, met Dean's eyes, and nodded before going back to Nate.

A shouting match with the captain (probably not the last they were destined to have) later Dean was dismissed, told he could go about his business and if he truly felt threatened by Eliot he was free to jump ship the next time they were planet side.

Or sooner, if he felt so inclined.

Dean had simply decided to avoid Eliot and figured The Reader would do the same.

He didn't know what to make of the fact Eliot showed up in the engine room minutes after Parker left from her latest nap.

"We need to talk." He stated simply.

"And I thought you were a reader. Can't ya tell I don't wanna talk to your likes? I've killed half a dozen like you." Dean stated as he climbed back to the main platform, hand resting on the piece on machinery, a pistol, one of many here, stashed behind it.

"You aint the only one boy." Eliot stated, folding his arms across his chest.

"You wanna call me that again?" Dean bristled.

"Yeah, boy." Eliot rolled his neck, dropped his arms and took a step forward, something in the way he moved shifting and Dean couldn't quite make his arm move to shoot the bastard when he reached across the space between them and touched the necklace Dean was wearing (always wore). When he started speaking again his voice was a little more distant. "'learned a dozen like you." He looked up to meet Dean's eyes. "Grew up to early, done some jobs here or there, killed plenty in your time." A knowing smirk crossed Eliot's lips as he pulled his hand back away from the medallion. "But less than you claim. And now you're what? A lone soldier fightin' the whole verse. Little boy lost, tryin' ta protect your brother."

Anger and bile surge up Deans throat but before words could escape Eliot leaned in, half whispering words Dean wouldn't allow himself to process until later in Deans ear before turning away, slipping out of the engine room with a backwards call of. "I'll show up again when you're ready for things to get more interestin'."

**oOo**

Dean wasn't sure what qualified as getting more interesting, not to mention whether or not he was ready for it, but a little more than nine hours after that first talk the main engine cluster needed a semi emergency tune up, the result of being on and active for the first time in several years.

Nothing to be worried about, just meant he spent twenty or so hours straight working to fix the problem and give every other necessary component a thorough once over with Sam doing his part in the bridge.

He didn't know how to react to climbing back topside just as Eliot came in with a plate of food and mug of what passed for beer in space.

Before Dean could think of some sort of response to this or The Words Eliot passed him the food and drink. "Eat. Take a break. I'll check your work."

By the time Dean started to put together a counter, asking what qualifications Eliot had and what the general gorram Eliot was descending the makeshift ladder with ease and Dean had to admit food was really welcome and Eliot probably was smart enough not to do anything that might break something.

And yeah, when one wrongly tightened valve could cause massive engine room fires and internal combustion? Someone checking what he did could be let go when he'd been awake for more than twenty-four hours.

"It feels mostly okay." Eliot said as he climbed back up not long before Dean finished inhaling the food.

"You're mojo works on Machines?" Dean tried to snarl but was too tired to put real venom in it.

"We read the truth in things." Came Eliot's vauge response. "Yeah. Don't know much what that's supposed to mean myself but I can get a sense when danger's comin' or weather's turning bad or somethin' aint quite right with a machine. Once spent three days on a transport shuttle trying to get my handler to tell the captain something was wrong with the engine. When the message got through and checked we were 'bout six hours away from a major explosion."

Dean tried to get his tired mind to put together a response, watching Eliot carefully, Hunter mind still caught on Reader=Dangerous even as the rest of his mind was trying to deal with the reasoning that yeah, just because he'd killed a couple (and yeah, only two) readers who'd been corrupted by their powers there could be uncorrupted ones.

He noticed a slight tremor in Eliot's hands. The way he rested them on the smooth metal, eyes tracing the contours of the ship but moving, always moving.

"哥们. You alright?"

Eliot looked up, a startled expression on his face, like he'd zoned out in the twenty seconds since he'd stopped speaking.

"Fine." He growled. "Get some sleep." He left the engine room before Dean could remark about how Dean *so* believed him about being okay.

**oOo**

Dean had no intentions of seeking out Eliot.

Really. He hadn't even noticed (really) that Eliot hadn't been by to bother him since the engine troubles four days ago. They'd spoken civilly to each other in the context of the crew, an improvement over the tension of that day or two somewhere in there, but didn't attempt to interact.

The first trip planet side hadn't even really changed anything besides Nate pointedly asking if he needed to seek out a new mechanic and pilot and Dean growling a negative before heading to check in with Sam.

They mostly mended bridges, at least as far as there had ever been bridges between them, and that was that.

So he hadn't been paying attention to what and where Eliot got up to. He was busy being a mechanic on a really gorram old ship, keeping Parker out of trouble by teaching her engine stuff, keeping a watch on his brother, and trying to avoid Sophie who gave off this air of a bad idea waiting to occur to someone.

And avoiding Hardison, and Nate, and okay Eliot too but he didn't play well with others for long and Parker was already a big step up for him.

But the point was he hadn't been looking to get involved in Eliot. He just didn't sleep like a normal human being and his timing was horrible as usual when he climbed out of The Impala two days after their first excursion planetside.

But the med ward door was fifteen feet from where the impala was docked and the door was open and it's not Dean's fault he's learned to pay attention to his surroundings especially the sounds of pain.

Before he was even all the way up the ladder back aboard Leverage Dean heard the harshness behind half whispered words echoing down the hallway.

"I'll be fine, just takes gorram ti-" The words choked off even as Dean registered it was Eliot.

"You can barely talk." Nate's voice countered. "You're shaking. You're eyes aren't focusing. You're getting worse. I need you functioning when we make landfall, not going through withdrawals and in a full psychotic break."

"I can make it." Eliot hissed. "Once it's outta my system I'l-" There was a shocked silence before he continued. "A sedative? When it wears off I'm gonna fuckin' kill ya Nate." Even as he said it the tension behind his words faded a little.

"I checked your file, you'll metabolize it fine." Nate said calmly. "You're recovering and at risk for a psychotic break and I don't need this crew in that kind of risk. It's stay sedated and restrained until you're not a danger or take your medication."

"Gonna. Murder. Ya." The words faded into silence.

"I know. I know." Nate reassured glibly. A moment later he was closing the door behind him, catching Dean staring.

"So our main line of defense is a recovering drug addict?" Dean asked. "Good to know."

Dean had never met a man who could say more with a single look of utter contempt than Nathan Ford.

Dean didn't expect an actual answer.

"The Alliance organization that kidnapped him when he was a child found out he was a reader and spent the better part of two years experimenting on his brain and body. The damage done was so extensive he's spent the last three decades taking a dayily cocktail of bio-chemical replacements for thing his body is now incapable of producing on it's own, nero-inhibitors to block the majority of his gift cause they severely damaged the part of his brain that should allow him to control it on his own, anti-psychotics, and pain killers."

Dean blinked. "The fuck?"

"But most of the above are hard to get and easy for the alliance to track. They put the pieces together and the whole crew's at risk so he's going off everything that isn't necessary to keep him breathing and all he's asked is that the rest of the crew doesn't know how sick he's been and gonna get." Nate paused. "If I find out you so much as have a thought of taking him out while he's detoxing I'm kicking you off my ship before we reach planetside."

"I wouldn't k-" But Nate was already walking away.

Later Dean would not be able to say what made him wait for Nate to leave the hall before letting himself into the med ward and spending the next several hours sitting on the second medical bed, watching Eliot sleep.

And thinking.

The sedative only kept Eliot fully under for a little over six hours. Dean was still sitting there thinking when Eliot shifted and moaned softly in his sleep, pain hitting their hitter before he was even fully conscious.

Dean needed a drink.

He'd been raised to fight monsters and rescue and protect the victims of them. Laying before him was a man first seen as a monster but now a victim of monsters far beyond Dean's ability to kill.

Only he doubted Eliot would be pleased with being seen as a victim.

Eliot shifted again, pained and confused eyes opening, hands tightening into fists as he fought the effects of the sedative. Terror of a kind Dean wished he couldn't imagine it's origin replaced the confusion and pain and Dean moved forward. "哥们. It's okay. You're on Leverage. Nate just had you sedated for a little while. Nothing else happened."

Shaking hands grabbed Dean's arm in an almost bruisingly tight grip.

Dean didn't let himself wonder if Eliot had been engineered to be stronger than normal humans.

Dean patted the hands awkwardly, trying to meet Eliot's unfocused eyes. "It's okay. Seriously. Nothin's gonna happen to you. No one's messin' with you on my watch. Relax."

Eliot slowly untensed, settling back onto the bed, his eyes closing halfway, seeing the room and things Dean figured only another reader could see. His hands loosened and Dean would care later about whether or not he'd actually have a bruise on his arm.

"You were right man." He stated before stepping back. "You were right."

"About what?" Nate asked behind him, a infuriating knowing look on his face.

"He told me you're a sneaky bastard." Dean stated with a cocky grin, taking his seat again.

Nate didn't ask what he was up to. Dean was beginning to get a feeling Nate had known the outcome of this before Eliot even decided to go off his meds.

That may have not been what Eliot had told him, but it was the truth.

**oOo**

If anyone noticed Eliot disappeared for a day no one mentioned it.

Dean left Eliot when he had to, he was a mechanic and he was human, but he always came back as quickly as he could.

He wouldn't admit it, expect maybe to himself, but those words he'd said, trying to calm down a man afraid he was waking from a bad dream to a worse reality for painfully understandable reasons…

He wouldn't let anything happen to Eliot on his watch.

Eliot was their enforcer, their hitter as someone had said. From the way Eliot looked after the others from Project Olympiad maybe he was even their protector.

But who protected the protector?

Well, Dean had fought monsters his entire life, and looked after his brother. He was pretty sure this would be thankless and close enough to impossible that he'd do just fine.

He just could never let Eliot find out, which would have been easier if the bastard wasn't a reader.

In the end it proved pointless. Eliot was only half awake, finally lucid enough and through enough of the worst of it that Nate left him to decide what next, when he turned to Dean and just smile that cocky, devil-may-care, wild smile.

Dean wondered how anyone had thought putting that man in a cage was a good idea.

"Told ya." Eliot said simply, stretching like a great cat, dangerous and graceful even when the sedatives in his system should have him weak as a kitten.

Dean just glared. "Bitch."

The word came unbidden. They'd only known each other for a week. He'd threatened to kill Eliot not all that long ago.

How the hell did they end up here?

Eliot just gave him another smile and slid his legs over the side of the medical bed.

Dean didn't need to have psychic powers to predict what came next and made it in time to prevent Eliot from taking a hard fall.

The low muttered "asshole" Eliot let out, hanging onto Dean despite his words, felt like those words Eliot had whispered (was it really just days ago?) in the engine room.

**oOo**

Eliot had been fine. He'd been surprised how fine.

After a thirty-six hour stay in the med ward, most of which he didn't remember due to sedation he was still going to kill Nate over, he'd recovered as best as he could.

He was still twitchy, still caught flashes of thoughts or memories or feelings littered around the ship, and he got a little lost that one night.

But he was doing better. Food was starting to stay down again. He was starting to be able to sleep. Life without a daily dose of brutality from his handler meant he could mostly deal with the pain that had no external causation without pain killers.

He was stronger.

And a lifetime of being a few pills away from crazy meant he was actually pretty good at functioning without them.

It could have been worse. He'd been worried it would be a lot worse. He hadn't been taking those meds for shits and giggles.

Though he was starting to think that they hadn't all been as necessary as his Olympiad doctors had insisted.

A day before they landed for their first job he confirmed with Nate he would be ready to play his part in their first job. He wasn't up to the level he'd been at when they first got together, he might never be at that level again. Nate of all people knew the ins and outs of how and how fast Eliot's body was and could start breaking down.

But Eliot would be able to give them some _Special _insight and be at least as good as any fighter they'd likely come across and if he had to do much of either Nate wasn't doing his job right.

Eliot had known it could happen, would happen eventually.

He just, wished it hadn't been at some ungodly hour in the morning before their first job. It would pass by the time the others awoke. He knew that much as he'd slid carefully out of the room he shared with his clan.

But he didn't need them seeing him like this. Not when they were about to put their lives in his hands.

Hiding in the engine room had seemed like a good idea. There were lots of nooks, the machines were noisy, and with everyone bedded down for the night no one would be in there for a few hours.

He pulled himself into the crevice under the stealth field generator at the base of the room and let the episode take hold.

Images came in a tidal wave, the undertow of feelings and sensations pulling him under and threatening to drown him. He couldn't sort it out. He didn't know how. It was physically impossible anyway.

So he let it pass over him. Listened to the screams and cries and laughter and rushes of adrenalin and soft brush of comfort contact with old loved cloth blend together and press in on him until his voice joined it, sounds indistinguishable from the mass even to him.

A hand on his shoulder, real, not in his mind, grounded him. There was someone there.

He turned, trying to see past the wash of color to what was actually registering in his eyes.

Green. Green eyes.

Familiar touch.

He could *feel* Dean.

Waiting.

Eliot told him he was alright. That Dean could leave. That it was just an episode. He'd be fine by morning.

Dean reminded him that if he wanted to be understood by someone other than Parker or Hardison Eliot needed to speak in English or Chinese.

"_Maybe you should learn some fucking Greek." _Eliot replied. He was too tired to bother with either of the others, and Greek was the one language that never got lost in the chaos of his mind.

"Still not there." Dean chided.

Eliot closed his eyes and cursed Dean in Greek before opening them again quickly. It was so much easier to just be here when he was looking at Dean. The second his eyes had closed it had tried to pull him back under.

He knew why he was doing this. He knew this was the path he'd chosen to walk for however long he had left.

But it was times like this he remembered the moment on their first job when one final act of defiance was starting to look like a real good option.

"So I'll give yours a shot." Dean's words pulled him back to reality. "Managed to get a translator working can't promise much about my accent." Dean made sure Eliot was looking at him when he spoke in broken Greek the phrase Eliot had told him that first night.

"_You're looking for something. You'll find it here."_


	3. The Things They Kept Secret

**Notes: **The Last in the Things They Carried Arc. Keep a look out for "Heal the Verse", or whatever it is I decide to actually name that. I'm doing a H/c Bingo card in this verse and aiming for the Blackout so many many stories will be coming soon to a screen near you.

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><p><strong>The Things They Kept Secret<strong>

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><p>Relationships were difficult. That was a fact of the 'verse.<p>

But when you were an agent working for a secret initiative that had life, death, and everything in between power over you? And when said powers-that-be instituted that you were supposed to like, or love, only who you were told?

Yeah. Relationships went from difficult to something that could get you killed.

Hardison remembered the first execution he witnessed was when one of his clan mates was discovered to be in a relationship with an Low Tech Operative. The LTO was killed. His clan mate, a High-Tech Infiltration Class, was demoted to a delta class and spent the next week in the detention center.

He'd been too young to know, to be told, what had happened. He did know she stopped giving him hugs and she became one of the many agents of Olympus you just didn't touch.

When he got older he knew it would have been all too easy to find out the exact details, but he didn't. By then his curiosity had gotten the better of him a few dozen too many times and he knew, gorram he knew, how creative the powers-that-be could get.

Maybe it was that background, still sometimes feeling like relationships were shipwrecks waiting to happen and it was best to not even look, or maybe just how everything was so new and odd that nothing seemed strange, but what he saw between Sophie and Nate barely even registered at first. They acted like old friends, the hint of a flirt in their interactions no more than was standard when there was a companion (or ex, Hardison was well aware her credentials were faked, he made her current ones himself) involved.

Hardison figured it out, of course, though it registered long before he actually realized it.

There was a history there. Something in lingering touches or quiet conversations or the way their eyes followed one another. They were doing a decent job hiding it, but Hardison had grown up around people whose lives depended on discretion.

He was pretty sure it didn't take long for the others to figure out there was a history there either. One other than what they'd been told.

But he knew the others didn't know about that time, the night Sophie first arrived on the ship, when the Winchesters were bunked down and Hardison was still having trouble sleeping and was roaming the hallways and caught a quiet moment between Nate and Sophie.

He was too far away to hear what was said, but he could see a casual conversation turn into flirting. He could see them all but dancing closer to each other before there was a misstep and suddenly there was sarcasm and rebuffs.

He'd watch from a distance as that conversation rippled out, defined *them*. The flirting stopped too soon. What they had almost said was silenced.

As they walked away, as Hardison watched, he could see it in their faces.

But it was easier for them to keep it secret. From each other.

From themselves.

Easier for the worst kept secret on Leverage to be about them sharing a history.

Easier for the fact they wanted more to stay one of the secrets Hardison kept for everyone.

**oOo**

There were a lot of ironies in their lives. Hardison mostly tried to ignore them all.

But there were some times, like when they were a few days out into the black, Leverage's maiden voyage toward their first job, and it had been his turn for the midnight watch…

He both liked and hated those long watches. They were good for thinking. Which could often be a bad thing.

But he had sat, leaning back in the chair, staring up at the black, long hours stretched out ahead of him and he'd considered how crazy it was that an HTO like him, traditionally known for being lost in data streams and not even liking human contact, was probably the second least anti-social person on the ship.

Sophie took first place, he was pretty sure, but she was so good at slipping in and out of roles Hardison sometimes wondered if she secretly hated people more than the rest of them.

Hardison guessed it was his history, yet again something he had to thank his Nana for. Nate was Nate, and Hardison knew enough about his history to know Jimmy hadn't exactly been father of the year. Parker had never really had a family to socialize her. Most of Eliot's Litter (he used to be more amused by the nickname for Low-Tech class children who went through training together, then he got old enough to realize just how much the powers-that-be tried to animalize that class and it stopped being so funny) was dead before his twenty-fifth birthday and after the fiasco with Amie his clan life had to have been strained. All in all none of it meant they were particularly used to spending time with people.

But the Hardison clan had been made as warm and stable as possible by his Nana and a Father that was stern but kinder than most. There had always been clan siblings about, always someone to play with or talk to or study with. He'd never been alone.

He missed them, more than he'd ever admit.

Sometimes the Winchester brothers just made it worse.

Sure their habit of yelling at each other made him twitchy, but something about it reminded him of his clan. He could see in the way they looked at each other that for better or worse they'd always have each other's backs because sometimes that was all they had.

Though, Dean and Eliot's weirdly developing friendship aside, the boys seemed to mostly keep to themselves. A lifetime of *them* not easily expanding.

His turn on watch came to an end and he slipped out of the bridge, wandering through the near silent halls of Leverage. They'd be arriving planet side in only a few days and everyone was trying to get some kind of regular sleep cycle back.

Strange. He'd never really had one to begin with.

He walked down to the bottom floor. It was Sam's turn on watch next and he hadn't shown up which meant Hardison got the pleasure of waking him (and probably his brother, great).

Just outside of The Impala's docking door Hardison leaned against the wall and tapped on the nano screen he carried. It was the work of only a few second to tap into the waive screen in the boy's room and turn on the camera. It was just to see who, if anyone, was awake. No point in waking them both up if he could help it.

Okay, maybe Dean gave off this feeling like an LTO who could beat him up if pissed off enough.

He was surprised to find the room darkened but with quick, ragged breathing. His eyes widened, pieces coming together in his head, and he almost turned the feed off and ran because *DAMN* either the brothers were a *lot* closer than he'd thought or Dean and Eliot had gotten over themselves sooner than Hardison would have guessed.

But before he could switch off the feed he recognized the breathing was only one of the men in the room. The other, Dean, was calling out softly. "Sammy. Sammy! Gorramit Sam wake up!" Hardison bit his lip. Nightmare. Not sex. _谢谢__爸爸的卡__书__._

He kind of felt bad for being so thankful about that.

There was a sharp sudden intake of breath and Sam lurching up in bed. Dean moved, holding his brother up, and Hardison waited, listening.

"What did you see?" Dean asked, softly. "What was it?"

Sam struggled for breath even as he replied. "Settlement, small, border world. Some guy walks into a trading post, shoots everyone and kills himself. I-" A harsh intake of breath.

"Hey, Sammy, take it easy. It's okay. Just breathe. We'll call Bobby in the morning. Take some of this."

Hardison knew he'd been hanging around Nate too long when he could recognize the sound of a bottle of whiskey being opened.

"Can you get some more sleep?" Dean asked. "I'll take your watch tonight."

"And make me take yours all week," Sammy muttered.

Hardison cut off the feed and headed back up the hall. He didn't want to be caught snooping.

Two minutes later Dean found him heading toward their room, apologized for being late, jokingly mocked Sammy, and that was that.

Hardison got back to his bunk, settled in, and slipped off to sleep listening to Eliot's steady breathing.

He wondered if Eliot knew he wasn't the only one with special powers.

He wondered if the Winchester boys would ever tell the rest of the crew or if they were too used to their world being just the two of them to let secrets like that be trusted to others.

**oOo**

Back on Olympus there was something the agents called "Eyes Only". Part wave on a pirated frequency, part illegal news bulletins, and part wake up call - being caught reading or watching it could earn you a beating. If the powers-that-be ever caught the person behind it there would probably be a very nasty spectacle made of their execution.

Of course the work meant it had to be one of the High-Tech classes, which meant they wouldn't just kill every third agent and call the problem solved (he remembered when there was a rumor the Low-Techs were starting a rebellion. He remembers how many of them the powers that be killed in one day just to make a point.)

Not that killing off the founder would do much good anymore. It had been going on for forty years. There were half a dozen hackers involved now. Hell, the founder was probably dead.

One thing Hardison thought he'll probably always regret was that he faked his own death before he could contribute.

He had plenty to add.

He found it odd, now, walking the halls of Leverage, drifting in and out of rooms, catching bits and pieces of conversations, of lives…

Back in Olympus hackers of his caliber were the masters of the information highways, and more often than not the secret keepers of it. The Alpha-Class High Tech Defenders, supposedly the last and strongest line of defense for Olympus information, had a fatal flaw. When you lost yourself in computers and data you started thinking purely in terms of code, you lost your creativity, the ability to make intuitive leaps or instinctive changes.

It was probably the best and worst kept secret of Olympus that there were any number of hackers in the High-Tech class who had access to any file they wanted to look at. But there was a code, a silent understanding, just like it was understood that LTOs would protect them in the field and that clan looked out for each other, hackers had a code of silence.

They knew all but told no one. They knew the stories, they kept the stories, and they took the stories with them to their graves.

It was oddly poetic.

But Sophie and Nate didn't know just how much of everyone's history he knew. Dean and Sam had no idea that the quirky tech guy used to hack into files classified at the highest level on his lunch break.

Parker and Eliot? They acted like it was business as usual.

Hardison kind of loved them for that. Their lives altered almost beyond recognition and Parker was still crazy and Eliot was still grumpy and they still growled and snapped and mocked each other until it counted because they'd have each other's backs all the way down. Because that's just how it worked.

They went planet side that first time in the shuttle together, talking, bantering, and then scattering as soon as they've landed. Hours later they all met back up, refusing to say where they've been, knowing Hardison knows but not caring as they play twenty questions and Parker showed off the plant she bought while Eliot slipped into the back of the shuttle and returned in a blue flannel shirt and jeans and it's completely odd because it's the first time they've been off duty Hardison's seen him wearing anything but black.

They went about their daily routines. Parker played on the catwalks and visited Dean. Eliot did his constant rounds of training and turning protein in every color of the rainbow into a meal for all of them and tried to pretend as he sat down to eat that there wasn't a good chance what little fresh food he'd portioned for himself would be thrown back up in an hour or two because his body was breaking down a little more every day and Hardison pretended not to know just how badly he was doing. (Logically Hardison knew it was important for someone to know the full extent of the damage done to Eliot but some days Hardison wished he hadn't hacked Eliot's medical file before leaving Olympus. Vague ideas were easier to deal with than detailed accounts of the hell that man went through.)

He and Eliot shared the crew's quarters and Hardison knew both his new clan mates knew he doesn't sleep well alone. Hardison knew Parker watched him sleep just for that reason.

They looked out for each other and Hardison looked out for them. He pulled Parker and Sophie aside to tell them not to go check up on Eliot even though they all knew he was down in the medical room detoxing from the meds he'd been on for most of his life. Too many people watching him would freak him out and them seeing him like that would hurt his pride. He talked to Sophie about Parker, talked her through some of the things an Alpha class wouldn't know, things that are ingrained terrors for those who'd been kept in line through corporal punishment.

He tried to talk Parker through the mental hurdles it had taken months for Hardison to get past.

And maybe, just maybe, he watched Dean's way of watching Eliot and considered telling their mechanic that Eliot was one of the agents you didn't touch. He wondered how to get across the story, how to talk about a broken relationship and never-born children and weeks spent being told, being shown, that the body you resided in was only yours by vague association.

And those who did own it would do with it as they pleased.

Maybe he would, someday, try to explain to Dean the ghosts they all carry. But right then he could hold onto another secret. It's what he did. It's what the others expected.

**oOo**

Silently Hardison listened to the sound of Eliot slipping out of his bunk and out of the room. He was having an attack. Hardison knew that. But he wouldn't interfere.

Shifting in the darkness he reached out, pressing his hands flat against the wall next to him. A distraction. A reminder.

His own secret. One he'd carry alone.

Sometimes he could swear he felt the metal that had replaced bone moving under flesh.

He couldn't. He knew it was impossible. They'd only been able to repair so much damage. He could feel his finger tips, his palms. If he submerged his hands in ice cold water he could mark the exact spots on his hands where he still had feeling.

If he held his hands in the cold long enough it chilled the metal the way it never did real bone.

He spread his fingers wide and pressed them against the wall, feeling the ache in the few traces of bone still in his hands.

You'd never know looking at them that they'd once been crushed so badly 49 of the 54 bones had been cracked, broken, or shattered entirely.

Of course that was the thing about High Tech. They were *_worth* _fixing. Even if they didn't want to be.

They were too valuable to be allowed to die. Too valuable to permit to be defiant, treated instead like misbehaving children who don't want to eat their vegetables and have to be coddled and patronized and reasoned with until they saw good sense and their voices were smothered entirely.

You'd never know, looking at his hands, that they'd once been an act of defiance. The calculated decision of a child genius who'd been told that the body he resided in didn't belong to him. That at day's end he was a tool to be used as the alliance ordained. What he felt, what he thought, the fact the way they wanted to use him would destroy everything he was now, didn't matter.

His hands had been a declaration that he *always* had a choice to refuse their rule.

That act was one more thing they'd taken from him.

He hadn't even been punished.

They'd reported it as an accident, fixed his hands, destroyed or silenced all evidence otherwise, and taken back his name.

His new clan would never know that, for a few hours, he'd been the youngest operative in Olympus to be one of The Named.

No one ever would.

It was his secret, like he carried for all the crew, the kind the hackers held until it could be told, trusted, or kept to the grave so that maybe, someday, everyone could forget.

Things hackers kept secret so that maybe, someday, it wouldn't hurt the others anymore.


End file.
